Mr. soon-to-be President. May you acomplish all you imagined you might be able to do, and have fun doing so.
And congratulations to you, the people of the United States of America. You did the right thing. I am profoundly grateful.
Edit: You need to read this and this (via – yes, they made me tear up, too. Sentimental sap that I am.).
Another edit: Not all the news are good, though.
Are you one of those who believe Nestlé when they say they have cleaned up their act? The Guardian has an excellent article on the subject. Read it.
According to Save the Children’s report, infant mortality in Bangladesh alone could be cut by almost a third – saving the lives of 314 children every day – if breastfeeding rates were improved. Globally, the organisation believes, 3,800 lives could be saved each day. Given that world leaders are committed to cutting infant mortality by two thirds by 2015 as one of the Millennium Development Goals, protecting and promoting breastfeeding is almost certainly the biggest single thing that could be done to better child survival rates.
And after reading all that you might want to check this out – including the list of all the brands owned or part owned by Nestlé.
Disclaimer: If you’re a mother who has tried to get breastfeeding to work and for whatever reason failed, don’t worry about it. If you’re reading this, chances are you have access to clean water and that your budget allows for spending a little money on formula.
Through this, I found this, and then this, and I guess I feel the need to comment (what else is new?) and since this blog is short of posts lately (especially posts with actual content) what better place to do it?
Now, I like pretty much every colour there is. Not in any combination and not in any setting, but there are few colours for which I can find no redeeming qualities. As such, pink, while not my favourite colour at all, is perfectly acceptable, and even quite likeable – in small quantities, occasionally and in the right setting. I own at least one pink t-shirt (and I wear it, occasionally). I like pink tulips, roses, peonies (no, not ponies), flower ribbon trim, lipstick (which I hardly ever wear, so it doesn’t really count) and so on. I had noted the increasing “pinkification” of products marketed at females – whether young or old – and it irritated me, but then marketing tends to more often than not, so what else is new?
However, pink is a very vivid colour, and like all vivid colours I find it most pleasing in small doses. And because of its pervasiveness lately, I have gone further towards avoiding it than I might have had it been Just Another (Vivid) Colour.
For example: When looking for scrapbooking resources a few years ago I found two forums in Norwegian dealing with the subject. I ended up on scrapping.no, though content-wise scrapbookexpress.no looked to be just as useful and friendly, simply because the latter was pink-pink-pink and the former a nice cool grey and white with a few red details. I got a headache from trying to read “the other forum” and so, even though I am registered, I have never actually participated, and can hardly be called a lurker since I have visited three or perhaps four times in five or six years.
Then I got pregnant, and we had a baby to shop for. The husband preferred not to find out the sex of the child at the ultrasound scan, and though I had previously thought it would be fun to know, I somehow didn’t feel the need to once we got there. Because I got gestational diabetes we had loads of scans later, but by that time I had decided I really didn’t want to know, from a pure point of contrariness. Becaus what I found when starting to shop for baby clothes was how hopelessly gendered they all were. Not only were pink and pale blue the order of the day, even when I found a nice little onesie in green, for example, it would have little bows and flounces (for girls) og printed car tyre tracks (for boys). Buying clothes for a child when you didn’t know whether it would be a boy or a girl was in point of fact quite challenging.
Thanks to the retro wave and 70ies colour scheme being in fashion, the lass has had a bearable amount of pink clothes and we have been able to find clothes that are either nicely “genderless” or girly, but not inhibitingly so. Trousers can be both “feminine” and solid enough to handle rough play at the same time. I have also made a conscious decision to let her play in the sand pit and climb and run in whatever she is wearing* – her pink bucket hat (a present) has been used as a bucket several times and frequently looks accordingly, but it can be washed. Eventually the grey sandiness might become permanent, but, really, what does it matter?
Here’s to hoping some of my reasons for not buying her all pink clothes and all that goes along with that mindframe sinks in. Once peer pressure starts to bear I suspect we will have a wannabe princess on our hands anyway, but we needn’t encourage it ourselves.
More reading (saying it better than I can manage at the moment):
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* Not in the faux folk costume I made for the 17th of May. I did keep her away from the sandpit when she was wearing that. Next year I think I’ll leave her to it if she wants to. It can be washed…
1. A priceworthy way to spend three months. (Via)
They have gone as far as correcting graffiti.
I have been tempted. Sorely tempted.
2. One of my coworkers is 40 today. Some of our colleagues have filled his office with approximately a gazillion balloons. Every now and then one of the balloons expire with a loud bang, making everyone nearby jump. My desk is nearby. I suspect I will do my share of jumping for a whole year by the time today is over.
Not that I’m usually gloomy, but I just discovered that my favourite columnist has a blog! Yay! I mean, I used to go to the railway station here in Trondheim (and that’s out of my way, believe me) to buy The Sunday Times at horrendous price on Monday just to read her stuff. And here it is, all bright and shiny goodness just for me. (OK, not just for me, obviously, but who cares?)
According to the papers, Norway has its first case of sentencing someone for sending out spam. While this is to be applauded, we still have a long way to go. Firstly, while the person in question apparently sent unsolicited emails to 650000 addresses, only 500 of them were “Norwegian” (which I assume means only 500 had the .no suffix), and the law that prohibits spam (or “utsendelse av e-postreklame med mindre det er et etablert kundeforhold mellom avsender og mottaker” – “the sending of advertisements through email unless there is an established customer relationship between sender and recipient” – meaning people you have once shopped with may spam you to their hearts’ content, though I think there is a section dealing with your right to refuse such advertisements as well) is only meant to protect Norwegians, so the guy in question was only charged with breaching the protection of privacy laws.
Also, I find this part interesting:
22-
Another fire in Trondheim, another of the old wooden houses reduced to ashes, and my favourite shop just now (fotovideo) gone. I hope to God they had insurance. I hope they manage to find another site to open a new shop pretty soon.
Jeg skj
Saccarina‘s dismissal of “trendforskning” reminded me of a “news” item a week or so back, where people who are supposed to know about these things made predictions about the future. The predictions mainly fell into the category “blindingly obvious, aaargh, hand me my sunglasses, please, for the love of God!” but one or two – ok, I exaggerate: one – stood out:
“Planes will be increasingly automated and we will no longer need pilots.”
Yeah. Despite the last few days chaos in Scandinavia because of dissatisfied pilots calling in sick THERE IS NO WAY IN HELL I’D GO UP IN A PLANE WITHOUT A PILOT!
I don’t doubt that planes will become more automated. But machinery fails. Machinery fails quite alarmingly often, in fact. And I can’t really see the stewardess pressing the reset button and not-so-automagically everything is hunky-dory again. Can you?